Saturday, September 3, 2011

Skyline Divide Hike – Flowers, Butterflies and Mount Baker

We can’t believe we hadn’t done this hike before. We thought about the Chain Lakes hike but it still had too much snow, so we were advised to try the Skyline Divide hike. A great recommendation. We hiked 10 miles round trip starting from the trailhead (parking lot on FR 37) in about 6.5 hours with two stops to eat and lots of stopping to enjoy the flowers and vistas. The trailhead is at 4,300 feet and the highest we hit was about 6,560 feet on Chowder Ridge. Skyline Divide connects up to Chowder Ridge as shown below (taken from reference [1]).

From talking to various folks we learned that it has been a late summer up on Skyline Divide. That meant a little bit of snow to walk over or around, but not that much. Today it was 60-65F and wildflowers were out en masse. Before we get to the bulk of photos let’s address a few basics we wondered about before and during the hike:

· What is Mt Baker named for? Mt Baker was named by George Vancouver who named it after his 3rd Lieutenant Joseph Baker of the HMS Discovery, who first saw the mountain on April 30, 1792 as described in Vancouver’s Discovery of Puget Sound [p. 82]

· Why is it called Chowder Ridge? From the Taylor and Douglas 1978 paper, Chowder Ridge is made up of sedimentary rock and the marine fossils sometimes found in the rock on the ridge are responsible for the name “Chowder Ridge.” This ridge is a special place in that it has several contrasting habitats in one area: steep, dry, southerly slopes and cool, snowy, steep north slopes. The former habitat is similar to the eastern Cascades and the northern Rockies. The latter habitat is characteristic of the western Northern Cascades.

· What’s a krummholz? A krummholz is a contorted often stunted subarctic or subalpine tree. The physical aspects of krummholz trees are formed by the severe conditions they grow in.

· Is that red snow I see? Why is snow red? According to Colored Snow Chemistry an article on About.com, the red snow is caused by the growth of algae and one in particular called Chlamydomonas nivalis. Sometimes the red snow is called watermelon snow and has a sweet-scent. (We did not go up and smell it to verify that!) The pigment causing the red color is red carotenoid , astaxanthin. Astaxanthin is found also in salmon, shrimp and providing the red color of salmon meat and cooked shellfish. This is “Chowder Ridge” after all.

A list of useful resources used to create this post is given below the images. In regard to references, we have to say that it’s been a struggle navigating all the different information sources in regard to naming. Years ago, a friend scolded us to stop using common names and use the established binomial nomenclature to ensure being understood. So, we did. Well that same friend came over recently and lamented about the unstable naming in the orchid world. And we find a bit of that when consulting different references for flowers we saw on Skyline Divide. At most we can say the genus with some degree of certainty. It makes you start to wonder if common names are not so bad after all.